Will Lesbian ever stop being a dirty word?

This article features two friends: Friend 1 self-identifies as a straight woman who occasionally falls for the odd woman. She is OK with kissing men but she hates penis. Friend 2 identifies as a gay woman or lesbian who loves vajayjay and all things lesbian feminist but prefers to ‘come out’ by saying she is gay. She has recently become more attached to ‘queer’ and will identify that way to someone but only after coming out as gay.

Lesbian is one of those words that provokes irksome emotions in people. Such strong reactions are curious therefore in this piece I use mine and two other friends’ experiences to explore why in 2012 Lesbian is still a word many gay and non-gay people are shy of. I also relate these experiences to wider issues and discussions in gender identity and sexuality. Often times, when people use the word lesbian, they depict the relationships in a derogatory manner that fails to acknowledge other central elements such as desire, companionship, and gender constructions such as femininity and masculinity in addition to the sexual element. The Lesbian identity appears to be caught in a rhetoric that measures our sexual behaviours with our identities being measured against this. For those people who apply sexual orientation labels to their identity, it is worth questioning the processes of social construction and application of these labels, and being conscious of the changes they undergo with time.

Many of my WSW (women who have sex with women) friends substitute the L word with gay. Lesbian is rarely used and in cases when it is, it’s often because gay fails as a substitute (e.g. in describing a lesbian sex scene). In family circles, my mother has been the only one brave enough to use the word, and when she does, it is others and not I that are the L- “I hope she hasn‟t gone to her lesbian friends‟ house again?!” In a conversation with a friend months ago she asked me if I had a word that I hated to be called. Hers was lazy. Mine was lesbian but I lied and said I didn’t have word. Although, I proudly told people of how I’m into women, date women, sleep with women and feel emotionally connected with women; only on equal opportunities monitoring forms would I refer to myself using the L word.

Friend 1 exhibited a deep-set discomfort to using Lesbian as a descriptor so as a challenge I asked her to use the L word in conversations with me at least once a day for the next week. I told her she could call me up on the phone and say “good morning lesbian”, “good night lesbian” or “how was your day lesbian?” and when she was starting to feel sick from doing so, she could say “fuck off lesbian” or “can you stop asking me to say so much lesbian, you lesbian?” Her response: I had asked for the impossible. Probing further into Friend 1’s distaste for the L word at a later date, she revealed that she had attended a Girl’s High School where it was a stigma to be a lesbian, perceived to be or be associated with one. She told me that the most stunning girl in the school had taken to her. She also liked this girl but she was very young and did not understand why. Friend 1 “stupidly told [her] classmates and the gist spread like hot sauce”. People started calling her the word. She eventually told her mum and had to leave the school. Because of that very traumatic experience, she cannot bring herself to associate that word with anything good “It was the most depressing part of my life”. She reiterates that she is not ashamed of her actions with her high school sweetheart but looking back she regrets not being able to live the way she wanted.

“I still wish I could go back and replay those scenes and not have been afraid of anything. I regret leaving that school the way I did. I just wish there was no stigma with that sort of relationship”.

Friend 2 did not share as dramatic a story with me. I asked her what she felt about the word Lesbian and she replied that she likes it now- “I didn‟t used to. It used to sound so unnatural”. My experience can be placed somewhere along these two Friends‟ trajectory. In the past, if someone had called me the big bad L world, I would have been deeply offended because I felt like I was being stripped of my individuality and being cast into a pile with the unutterable. Using the L word left me feeling that I had to explain that I was better
than society and the media depicts lesbians -horny and insatiable. But, I am only a victim of the current stance on female sexuality. Female sexuality has concurrently been manipulated by taboo, glorification and degradation. We live in a culture that remains inhospitable to critical analyses of female sexual agency therefore being lesbian typically confound matters. To speak at all, and then to speak in opposition to those manipulative traditions, is to invite strong reactions.

My impression is that when someone says she is gay or finds other ways of alluding to her female homosexuality without involving the L word, she is accepted without sexual behavior playing a defining role in establishing her identity as it would have if the word Lesbian had been employed.

This is perplexing since whatever the descriptor being employed, female homosexuality, defined as lesbianism in the Oxford dictionary is what is being described. The big question here is what does acceptance as a gay woman reveal about the ways mainstream culture is thinking about sexual orientation and gender identity issues?

I asked Friend 2 why she thinks many women would rather identify as gay than as lesbian and her answer was “because of the sexualization of the word lesbian by men and porn. Female sexuality in many respects continues to be dictated by heterosexual men but there is a double standard of morality. The idea of lesbian sex excites men but women who indulge in it and in fact proclaim it as important to their identities are considered revolting. I was once having a drink with a man, when my then-girlfriend passed through for a few minutes. I went over to handle business and when I got back he asked me who she was. I replied “my girlfriend” and added-“I hope you do not mind that I’m into women” (translated in my head as: I hope you aren’t homophobic). He replied that he liked it. When I asked what he meant -“do you mean you are OK with it or you actively like it?” He stated that he actively liked it. When he tried to sneak a kiss at the end of the night and I moved away, I never heard from him again.

Today, we take for granted the struggles that ensued prior to it being acknowledged that sex has functions distinct from, and equal in
importance to the reproductive. Lesbian sex boldly asserts the possibility of sex between two women and exclusive of men i.e. that
women are capable of giving themselves the same (or more) sexual pleasure that men can. Feminists have and continue to acknowledge that lesbians and gay men both face hatred for rejecting heterosexuality, and that a commonality of struggle exists but they also argue that the needs of lesbians and gay men are very different and that when they politically become a homogenous group, that the needs will default to gay men, because as men, gay men have more economic and societal power.

The debate up till now has concentrated understandably of the oppressive nature of social relations between men and women but many women continue to live in unabashed sexual repression. Foucault(1978) points out that sexuality is identity and that it is necessary for one’s sexual orientation to be “stable” in order for one’s sense of self to be stable. If lesbians have to identify differently in order to appease another person’s sense of self, is that not oppression?

Identifying as a gay woman or straight-for reasons similar to those mentioned above- rather than lesbian arguably incorporates acceptance by individuals within that oppressed group of the prejudices against them. This is sexual repression. Furthermore, substituting gay with lesbian depletes any authentic culture of female homosexuality that exists in the mainstream and prevents lesbians from being able to develop their own sexualities in order to gain true agency. Lesbian identity should be a function of what we are(positively and actively) and not what we are not i.e. insatiable, threesomeseeking, loo-fucking, monstrously philandering and only-good-for-porn women. Friend 2 and I vote that LESBIAN needs to be rescued from being used derogatorily. It is a unique and powerful word and it deserves to be preserved.

If you have any suggestion on how LESBIAN can be preserved or views on why women would rather identify as gay than as lesbian please write us.

Visit again next week. Friend 2 and I will be discussing the place of Queer in the lesbian identity.

A friend texted me to say this; “Just read your article. I was bullied for being a lesbian because I was aggressive, outspoken and hairy. Not because I was particularly lez back then! But I like the term now. And superdyke, is what my borthers call me:)”

I usually identify gay because it seems more appropriate, considering that I am genderqueer as far as gender identity goes, and the word “lesbian” refers to woman identified people who date/love/have sex with other woman identified people. Though, I am honestly not that pedantic about it, and often use “gay” and “lesbian” interchangeably. I don’t think people think there is anything wrong with the word itself, though I think some dykes do not identify with the whole lesbian feminist movement/man hating lesbians, so they choose to go with gay instead to separate themselves from that.

From a girly perspective…I think she was mostly bullied because she was soooooo hairyyyy…looool…not funny but its true …..most people think they are bullied because they are Lesbians but no..there is more to their discomfort than just what that identity as. They wear placards on their foreheads ….be a L in d bedroom… don’t wear it on the street…get a room I say. Be cool.
Anyways, this is my favorite article because it is so well written and thought-provoking….people should not just read the article on the surface…it tackles so many underlying issues associated with the L word from a critical perspective…which by the way i do still categorically hate d word LE…..ewwwww….God forbid I say it in full…LEMONADA…that i can say in full… HA…. cheerios……..

So you’re saying she should have stayed in the closet and presented herself to the world as something she is not? Why on earth would you advocate for that? Everyone should be able to be themselves without being harassed for it, no matter what that self is, so long as no one else is being hurt.

Hi Chisom Cynthia, thanks for reading and commenting. Like Shannon, thinks, I too don’t see why someone be less out or hairy to make other people happy. If I want to wear a placard on my forehead why not?! Being comfortable with who we are is one of the points of this article article. But I do love your comments so keep them coming!!

I think the most interesting segment of this post is that which relates to the experiences of your friend in high school who has now rejected the term “Lesbian” on every level even though arguably such a term would be the most accurate representation of her preferences from high school to the present day (Obv. I do not know her so the accuracy of this point can be contested.)

Taking this to be true I think one of the main issues here is not so much the existence of the word, or even what meaning people ascribe to it. It would be the height of “buying into” popular morals to assume that women in non-conventional relationships believe they are “loo fucking etc. etc.” as in line with the views of the most hardened bigot, and this is precisely what happens when the word is rejected.

The problem then is not one of heterosexual imposition on the community, but rather is an issue of confusion within said community. In my opinion women who distance themselves from the word attempt to distance themselves from the perceived hyper-sexual activity within the homosexual community, a perception which in my opinion is propagated by people in the community to a higher extent than those outside of it.

The reason for this distancing then is to celebrate and highlight the importance of love, affection, acceptance etcetera within their own relationship, in effect there is a subconscious statement

– The other girls are Lesbians, we are lovers –

Such division within the community is more responsible for the hurtful statements directed at the lady featured in your article than anything that comes from without – and I say this because I am a firm believer in the responsibility of any subculture to organize and develop its own norms and standards of conduct outside of the mainstream.

The problem that she faced in the girls high school was not because of her nascent orientation, rather it was because she broke the normative rules of her environment and released such personal information in an inhospitable environment. I’m pretty sure that she was not the gay individual there, and I am even surer that some of the girls who were most vehement in attacking her feelings were guilty of the same “Crime”

I have yet to formulate any serious response to this piece except to say that I love it. Hello… you had me at Foucault! Later today, you may have a pingback fro my blog just because I think this is a topic many lesbians (or dykes or WSW or anyone else…) don’t put much thought into.